Schaffhausen gets 3 life sentences for murdering daughters

This portrait of Aaron Schaffhausen's daughters -- from left, Amara,11, Cecilia, 5, and Sophie, 8 -- was on display in the courtroom at the St. Croix County Courthouse in Hudson on Monday, July 15, 2013. Schaffhausen was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the 2012 murders of his daughters in their River Falls home. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

To the three young daughters he murdered last summer in River Falls, Wis., Aaron Schaffhausen was "the darkness, the bogeyman and the monster under the bed."

Those words came from Mary Liz Stotz, the girls' aunt, before Schaffhausen was sentenced Monday to life in prison for killing daughters Amara, 11; Sophie, 8; and Cecilia, 5, one year ago in their home.

St. Croix Circuit Court Judge Howard Cameron gave the 35-year-old life in prison without any chance of parole for each of the three counts of first-degree intentional homicide.

The sentences will run consecutively, a decision that Cameron said he made to send the message "that each child is so important."

Schaffhausen, who prosecutors said committed the killings to hurt his former wife, chose not to address the court and appeared stoic, as he has throughout the proceedings in his case.

Ex-wife Jessica Schaffhausen was flanked by family and friends as she watched from the courtroom gallery in Hudson. It was too difficult for her to address the court, prosecutor Gary Freyberg said.

In one of several victim impact statements, Stotz, who is Jessica Schaffhausen's sister, said Aaron Schaffhausen did not deserve his daughters -- girls who touched so many other lives.

"Aaron's too much of a coward to even own what he did ... as that would mean he would have to accept some form of accountability for his actions," she said.

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Schaffhausen, Stotz told the courtroom, should "rot in hell" for what he did.

Her daughter Eryn Schlottle, 15, said her three cousins could have made the world a better place. The teenager said that what happened to them makes no sense -- and will probably never make sense to anyone.

"I thought the world was a better place than this," she said. "People said there is sunshine on the other side of things that are like this, but so far, I don't believe them, because there's always going to be that black spot that was created by evil."

Schaffhausen's mother and father also addressed the court, as did his aunt Patty Fix, who asked that Cameron consider Schaffhausen's mental illness

"Send him for life, but stop saying he's a coward," said Fix, who became emotional as she spoke about the girls. "He's not a coward. He does have a mental illness."

Schaffhausen owes a lot of people an apology, Fix said, adding she wants him to have an opportunity to know what he has done to the families and the community.

Schaffhausen repeatedly told people that he felt homicidal, but "nobody came to defend him and said, 'You need to be in a flippin' hospital -- you're insane,' " Fix said. "He desperately needed an intervention, and none came. Nothing. No one.

Aaron Schaffhausen is led by sheriff's deputies from the courtroom for the final time as St Croix County Circuit Court Judge Howard Cameron folds up his papers after Schaffhausen was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the 2012 murder of his three daughters in their River Falls home at the St Croix County Courthouse in Hudson Monday July 15, 2013. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

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Schaffhausen's father, Roger Schaffhausen, said he has been told that no one should feel responsible or accept blame for what his son did, and for the most part, he believes that to be true.

"But I also believe that to some degree we are all responsible," he said. "And that if we all went a little bit further in reaching out to Aaron, maybe, just maybe, this could have been averted."

Defense attorney John Kucinski, who continues to argue his client was legally insane, said after the hearing that he planned to appeal. A major issue will be the denial of a request by the jury during deliberations to see reports by mental health experts who testified.

Several jurors who served during the trial in April to determine whether Schaffhausen was legally sane attended Monday's hearing. All but one was a parent, and the case "hit home for all of us," juror David Hermansen said.

The maximum sentence given Schaffhausen, which included 12 1/2 years of initial confinement and 7 1/2 years of extended supervision for an attempted arson charge, was the right one, Hermansen said

AN UNTHINKABLE CRIME

On July 10, 2012, the day after taking a train from Minot, N.D., to the Twin Cities, Schaffhausen texted his ex-wife to say he was in town and wanted to see their daughters. She allowed him to visit the girls at her home but said she didn't want to see him.

Schaffhausen would need to be gone by the time she got home from work, she told him.

When he arrived, the girls rushed to the door, happy to see their father, the baby-sitter watching them at the time testified. The sitter didn't notice anything unusual about Schaffhausen that day, and after getting permission from Jessica Schaffhausen, she left him alone with the girls.

Ralph Baker, a court-appointed psychiatrist who interviewed Schaffhausen, testified during the trial that Schaffhausen told him he was helping Cecilia find her shoes when he began strangling her. Schaffhausen said that after hearing the girl's cries and realizing she wasn't dead, he went the kitchen, got a knife and cut all three girls' throats before tucking them into their beds, the doctor testified.

A spilled gasoline container was found in the basement. Baker said Schaffhausen told him he planned to start the house on fire, but decided against it.

He then called Jessica Schaffhausen, who was leaving work, and told her, "You can come now, I killed the kids," she testified.

Schaffhausen turned himself in to police that afternoon.

An investigator interviewed him for more than three hours. Schaffhausen responded little. He twice broke down sobbing and at one point told the investigator, "I need help." When asked what kind of help he needed, Schaffhausen replied, "I don't know."

THREATS AND ILLNESS

Several witnesses during Schaffhausen's insanity trial testified that they heard him speak of harming his girls and ex-wife.

In a conversation with cousin Liz Daleiden in the middle of the night a few months before the killings, Schaffhausen said he felt homicidal, she testified. He said he had taken himself off of his antidepressant medication because it was giving him those thoughts.

Schaffhausen told her he had driven halfway from Minot to River Falls with the intention of cutting his girls' throats. He then began crying and hung up, she testified.

She called him back and told him he needed to get help, and then told his mother about the call.

In the months leading up the killings, multiple colleagues working in construction with Schaffhausen in Minot heard him speak of killing his children and ex-wife, three of them testified.

"You could tell that the (January 2012) divorce was weighing on him more and more," said one, Jarrod Klein.

Jessica Schaffhausen testified she began getting repeated phone calls from Schaffhausen after the couple split. During a call in March 2012, she heard him speak of killing their girls in order to hurt her, she testified.

She contacted police, and an officer in Minot determined Schaffhausen was not a threat.

Jessica Schaffhausen testified that her ex-husband appeared to be dealing with depression in varying degrees since they first met. In 2011, as their relationship was crumbling, he went to a doctor and was prescribed an antidepressant that seemed to help.

But after their divorce, Schaffhausen stopped taking the medication -- a mistake, said psychologist J. Reid Meloy Meloy, the defense's mental health expert.

In addition to the depression, Schaffhausen had a "personality disorder not otherwise specified," which had prominent depressive and dependent traits and evidence of obsessive thinking and other characteristics, Meloy found.

Because of his depression and other issues, Schaffhausen was unable to conform to the law and was therefore legally insane, the psychologist concluded.

A mental health expert for the prosecution and Baker, the mental health expert appointed by the court, both came to another conclusion.

Those experts found that while Schaffhausen did suffer from depression, his mental state did not make him unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of the killings or unable to obey the law. Essentially, he was legally sane -- a conclusion the jury ultimately agreed with.